RELIGION
The belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.
RELIGIOUS DOGMA
A set of behavioral principles laid down in the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Tripitaka and other texts and interpreted by individuals who claim to have knowledge of how that God, or those Gods, require individuals to behave.
RELIGION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
“Religious ideas may well have been the source of human rights in earlier eras; some religious groups might even have helped to inspire the modern human rights revolution. But religion has now outlived its utility. Religion, by its nature, is too expansionistic and monopolistic, too patriarchal and hierarchical, too antithetical to the very ideals of pluralism, toleration, and equality inherent in a human rights regime. Religion is also too dangerous, divisive, and diverse in its demands to be accorded special protection. Religion is better viewed as just another category of private liberty, expression, and association and given no more preference than its secular counterparts. Indeed, to accord religion special human rights treatment is, in effect, to establish it and to discriminate against non-religious parties in the same position. Purge religion entirely, this argument concludes, and the human rights paradigm will thrive. This argument proves to be impractical. In the course of the twentieth century, religion defied the wistful assumptions of the Western academy that the spread of Enlightenment reason and science would slowly eclipse the sense of the sacred and the sensibility of the superstitious…the proper response to religious belligerence and pathos cannot be to deny … to dismiss it to the private sphere…The proper response is to castigate the vices and to cultivate the virtues of religion…The challenge of this new century is to transform religious communities from midwives to mothers of human rights.” Religion and Human Rights, John Witte and M. Christian Green, editors
“Religion has been with us since the dawn of civilization but, no ancient religious or secular belief system regarded all individuals as equal. From Hammurabi’s Code to the New Testament to the Koran, one can identify a common disdain toward indentured servants (or slaves), women, and homosexuals.” Micheline Ishay, The Human Rights Reader, Third Edition
“Human rights is a worldwide secular religion that has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as its sacred text.” Elie Wiesel
“Essential disagreements appear increasingly to pit secular human rights activists against individuals and groups acting from religious motives…on issues such as reproductive rights, gay marriage, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and blasphemy laws, human rights activists and religious groups often find themselves on opposing sides...human rights cannot truly go global unless it goes deeply local, unless it addresses plural philosophies and beliefs that sometimes collide with or appear to resist its appeal to universal norms. If international human rights standards have a claim to universality their relevance must be demonstrated in all contexts, and especially where religion determines state behavior…Human rights defenders should not shirk from insisting on a distinction.” Jean-Paul Marthoz and Joseph Saunders, Religion and the Human Rights Movement
IN THE NAME OF YOUR GOD
I ain't afraid of your Yahweh I ain't afraid of your Allah I ain't afraid of your Jesus I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your God
Holly Near, I Ain’t Afraid
THE WORLD’S MAJOR RELIGIONS
Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group. A comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that there are 5.8 billion
religiously affiliated adults and children around the globe, representing 84% of the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.
The study finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010.
In addition, more than 400 million people (6%) practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. An estimated 58 million people – slightly less than 1% of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.
Pew Research Center.
CHRISTIANITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
“Most people would define human rights as entitlements that individuals get against the world and most especially against the state. And it doesn’t seem as if that’s something that was easy to extrapolate from whatever Christianity’s original contribution to world affairs was…But it’s hard to find in Christian materials for centuries the idea that in politics, and especially in law, individuals should have these entitlements that they can claim against political authority…While Christians did a lot to introduce the idea of the equality of all individuals they also did a lot to obstruct the progress of that idea.” (Samuel Moyn, Christianity and Human Rights: A Complex Picture. See also, Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights). “As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privilege caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress.” Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?, in Why I Am Not a Christian, edited by Paul Edwards, p. 25.ISLAM AND HUMAN RIGHTS
“The precepts of Islam, like those of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and other major religions possessed of long and complex traditions, are susceptible to interpretations that can and do create conflicts between religious doctrine and human rights or that reconcile the two. Even where the discussion is limited…to Muslims living in the area stretching from North Africa to Pakistan, one observes Muslims’ attitudes toward human rights running the gamut from total rejection to wholehearted embrace.” Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics.HINDUISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS:
“What is dharma? Dharma is one of the most complex and multifaceted concepts in Hindu philosophy. Derived from the Sanskrit root “dhr” meaning “to hold” or “to support”, dharma refers to the cosmic order that sustains the universe and the moral duties that maintain social harmony. Unlike the modern Western concept of rights, which emphasizes what individuals can claim from society, dharma focuses on what individuals owe to others and to the cosmic order. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dharma is described as the highest principle: “Nothing is higher than Dharma. The weak overcomes the stronger by Dharma, as over a king. Truly that Dharma is the Truth; Therefore, when a man speaks the Truth, they say, ‘He speaks the Dharma.’” This ancient text reveals that dharma encompasses duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues, and the “right way of living.” It represents both the universal principles that govern the cosmos and the specific moral obligations that guide individual behavior. Dharma versus modern rights: a fundamental difference. The contrast between dharma and modern human rights frameworks is striking. Modern human rights discourse prioritizes individual entitlements—what a person can claim as their own. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance, lists freedoms and protections that every person inherently possesses. Dharma reverses this logic. In Hindu philosophy, obligations come first, not rights. When everyone fulfills their dharmic duties, everyone’s rights are automatically protected through the fulfillment of others’ responsibilities. A person does not assert rights but performs duties, creating a system where collective welfare emerges from individual moral action.” Hindusim and Human Rights: Understanding Dharma© Copyright 2012 The Kemper Human Rights Education Foundation. All rights reserved.